The POD almost certainly has to be a delayed or perceived as American victory Tet offence. Anything further back than that and we run into major butterflies.
I don't see how you can avoid the Tet Offensive, or get it viewed as an American victory. I think the best you could do is get Walter Cronkite not to publicly say he doesn't think the US can win the war. Perhaps the United States stumbles on equivalent of the famous Lee's Orders for the Tet Offensive, and is able to not be quite so brutally suprised.
Even if you change Tet, you still have the MLK assassination, and its attendent urban violence, you still have Johnson having signed the Civil Rights Act, and you still have Nixon's "Southern Strategy." Plus you're dealing with Richard M. Nixon. The man was pathologically committed to becoming president. Whatever dirty tricks and other illegal shenanigans were needed would have been used. LBJ might have been a ruthless political boss, but Nixon's ruthlessness was on a whole nother level.As for 1972, I concur with the Reagan-RFK match-up. In 1972 Humphrey will not get the establishment support he got in 1968, and Reagan will be much better prepared and that negates Nixon's only real advantage. McCarthy will not run after Johnson crushed him in 1968.
Rockefeller was, let's face it, an outside shot anytime past 1964 given how much the GOP activists hated him. Nixon won in 1968 because neither Reagan nor Rockefeller ran great campaigns (also Nixon got Thurmond on board, and that prevented the South swinging to Reagan).
Romney was actually a pretty candidate, a moderate Republican who was against the war and the governor of a pretty successful state, but a combination of saying he was "brain-washed" about Vietnam and Detroit burning down after the MLK assassination seemed to kind of KO his ambitions. Gov. Spiro Agnew called out the national guard to put down the rioters, so that combined with his complete lack of personal morales (actually his total criminality) really made him the perfect Nixon VP. Oh my God, that's it. SPIRO AGNEW FOR PRESIDENT '72(Romney was never a great candidate, and I see few Democrats willing to go head-to-head with RFK. This does leave room for Rockefeller or somebody on the left of the Republican Party to run.)
By few Democrats willing to go head to head will RFK, would you mean Hubert Humphrey or Eugene McCarthy? Because if we allow that LBJ could win against the Nixon Machine in '68, then you can bet that LBJ will use all of his considerable clout to make sure the RFK doesn't get the nomination in '72.
I do not believe that if LBJ runs against Nixon he would be able to defeat him. RFK might have been able to, because of his brother's legacy, and because of his own ability to appeal to poor white voters, but I don't think that LBJ was capable of beating Richard Nixon.As for who wins? It depends on Johnson's second term, and it depends on the campaign both candidates run.
If he did, then I would say the Reagan would get the '72 nod, and probably win, because the Democrats would be cutting each others throats over the nomination. RFK swore he would destroy Hubert Humphrey political career, and its destruction may be witnessed on national television, while RFK does battle with LBJ on the floor of the Democratic Convention. After RFK wins the nomination, then who is his VP? It has to be someone southern. Maybe Senator Fulbright of Ark.?
After 4 years of saber-rattling Reagan while the United States loses in Vietnam and the Gas Crisis crushes the country, its ready for a different vision. So in 1976 along comes the peanut farmer from Georgia, Mr. Jimmy Carter. He has a big heart, a message of peace abroad, and he's squeaky clean.
Having said this let me repeat SPIRO AGNEW FOR PRESIDENT '72
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